


Moon Song

by ikeracity



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 01:47:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6733042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ikeracity/pseuds/ikeracity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Werewolf AU. When Charles is captured by hunters, Erik and his pack go after him. It turns out there might be some room for redemption left for both of them after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moon Song

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Moon Song 月之歌](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14852405) by [OneBridgeX](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneBridgeX/pseuds/OneBridgeX)



> This is a sequel to [this ficlet](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5284727/chapters/14159158) that was originally posted on tumblr. All thanks to [pangea](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Pangea/pseuds/Pangea) for the quick beta :F

They had been young wolves together, once. They had lain under the stars and watched the moon come out, and they had made love slowly in the grass. Then, when the moon-song had risen under their skin and called out their wolves, they had run together, shadows in the trees. They had raced so quickly their paws had hardly touched the ground, and they had loosed twin howls that frightened sleeping creatures, howls that were anything but lonely.

Charles remembered that time, vividly. He remembered, too, the snarl on Erik’s face when he had called Charles naïve and stupid and willfully blind, when he had taken all his belongings and Raven and left. Perhaps he had been right after all. It was hard to think anything else when he was lying curled up in a cage, the silver of the bars burning him every time he turned.

The hunters who had captured him were speaking. “—not much longer,” one of them was saying. It was difficult to concentrate with the tranquilizer in his system, but Charles strained his senses. “The moon’s coming up in a few minutes. We should administer the serum when it’s at its peak.”

“You think it’ll be most effective then?” asked a second voice. It sounded skeptical. “Shouldn’t we see if the serum prevents the shift from happening at all?”

“Didn’t you read my fucking notes at all? We already tried that with the one before this. Wasn’t pretty.”

“What happened?”

“Animal had some kind of seizure. Lots of seizures, actually. Didn’t make it. Heart gave out.”

“Shit, man.”

“Yeah. But that one was a mongrel.” The voice turned fiercely eager. “This one’s a pureblood. We’ll see if the serum affects him differently.”

Charles raised his head sluggishly. He couldn’t see the men clearly, but he could hear them nearby. “P—please,” he said. The word sounded as if it were emerging from a long, narrow tunnel. His head spun as he tried to push himself up. “Don’t do this.”

A shadow came closer and crouched in front of his cage. After a moment, the blur resolved into a middle-aged man, tall and lanky, glancing down his nose at Charles through his glasses. “You’re awake.”

“Why are you doing this?” Charles asked. “I have an agreement with the Guild, with Harrison. Harrison Golding!” 

Someone behind the man laughed. “You think your agreement with the Guild means shit to us? Newsflash, puppy: some of us don’t agree with the direction the Guild’s taken. Bunch of tree-huggin’ hippies runnin’ the damn thing these days. Good thing there’s still some of us left to remember what a _real_ hunter does. Ain’t that right, Lex?”

The man crouched in front of Charles’s cage nodded. “That’s right. But we’re kinda evolved now, you see. We’re not interested in killing you. We’re interested in using you to find a cure to…your unfortunate situation. Kill a wolf and you don’t make a dent. But cure a wolf…” Lex’s dark eyes gleamed. “You see where I’m going with this.”

Sharp horror flooded him. Charles reached out to grasp the bars and recoiled, hissing as the silver burned his fingers. “You can’t do this. _Don’t_ do this.”

“Sorry, puppy,” Lex said. “You don’t have much choice in this.”

A rusty creak screeched above them, and Charles twisted in time to see a skylight shuddering open. There was a moment of darkness—then the clouds shifted, and moonlight streamed down, glorious and rich. Charles’s bones ached, and he let out a harsh, pained breath. He tried to force the change back, tried to cling to his human form, but the moon was powerful and he was weak with fatigue and the effects of the tranquilizer. He collapsed to his hands and knees, gasping desperately for breath. And then the wolf overtook him.

 

*

 

The moon above was bright and round. The night was cooled by a light breeze that carried scents perfectly, and the air smelled of impending rain. The grass was wet with dew, and the earth was fresh.

They had met on a night like this, all those years ago. Charles had dragged him from the lake by his scruff, soaked to the bone and half-dead. They had collapsed on the bank together, and Erik had looked at him and seen in his human eyes an understanding, a kindred spirit. Charles had said, “Hello,” and touched Erik’s fur, and instead of snapping his hand off, Erik had closed his eyes and let Charles stroke the wetness from his muzzle.  

Tonight those memories seemed closer than ever. Erik paced, restless. The wolf in him itched to run, to hunt. But he had already sent Azazel and Angel out to scout, and he wanted to be here when they returned. They were close—he could sense it with the instinct of a predator closing in on its prey. This would end tonight.

Near the tree line, Victor paced, too, his stride long and annoyed. He reeked of defiance. Erik was too preoccupied to deal with him now, but he would have to be set straight, later. He had been dissentious ever since this mission began, and it was beginning to rankle the rest of the pack. Either he would fall in line or Erik would cut ties with him, for the good of the group.

But those thoughts were very far away, buried beneath the immediate concerns of the night. When he scented Azazel and Angel closing in on the field, all other thoughts fell away, and he stood, nearly trembling with adrenaline.

 _Found them,_ Angel said, her voice grim. _It’s an abandoned warehouse, barely ten miles from here._

Erik resisted the urge to take off at a sprint. Logistics first. Rushing in without a plan could get them killed, and Charles along with them. _How many?_

Azazel huffed. _Three men. Nothing._

Three men? Only? Surely not. But then again, they didn’t know Erik and his pack were on the hunt. And perhaps they didn’t know how important Charles was, how precious.

Erik lifted his muzzle to the moon and scented the air. Fresh, cold, sharp. A good night for a hunt. _Let’s go_.

They loped soundlessly through the shadows, their paws quiet on the damp earth. Following the trail Azazel and Angel had left was easy, and Erik took the lead, his pace rapid and impatient. By the time the warehouse came into sight, he had left the pack behind. Panting softly, he stood on the slight rise and waited for them to catch up. He could almost smell Charles. Some instinct in him knew he was close and burned to seek him out, to press their noses together and know that he was alright. But he waited, knowing that acting rashly would do more harm than good.  

After a minute, the rest of them arrived, and they stood on the edge of the copse, surveying the warehouse. It was small, dark, and old, and certainly looked abandoned. But Erik could smell fresh scents in the area. Fresh human tracks, as well as motor oil and the rusty metal of an old car.

The front door opened with a sudden, low creak, and a man stepped out. Tall, thin, balding. He smelled like cigarette smoke, gunpowder, and blood. Erik’s hackles rose. As they watched, the man jammed a cigarette between his lips and lit it with a flick of his lighter. Then he stood silently in the darkness, cigarette glowing orange with each inhale.

 _Azazel,_ Erik said.

_On it._

A slow-moving cloud dimmed the moon, and the great red wolf sprang forward, hardly even a shadow in the darkness. The man didn’t even have time to scream. The light of the cigarette went out, and Erik moved forward, the smell of blood rousing the beast inside him. He wanted to sink his teeth into flesh, wanted to bite down and feel the crunch of bone. Two men left. At least one of them would be his.

They entered the warehouse, leaving Azazel and Jason to stand watch outside. It was a small building with only a handful of rooms, most of them barred shut. Erik ignored them all and followed the human scent. It grew stronger as he turned the corner and came to a door that was cracked open. He could hear voices within, speaking lowly.

“—keep monitoring him for a few more hours. If his condition doesn’t change…well.”

“Well?”

“Well take him out and shoot him. Ain’t no good to us like this. We’ll have to scrap him, start over. Serum clearly didn’t work the way we wanted it to.”

Rage swelled up in his chest, hot and uncontrollable. Erik shoved the door fully open and burst in, snarling. The two men inside staggered back and stared at him, eyes wide and terrified. The sharp tang of piss and fear filled the room, and the man further away from him stumbled back and bolted for the side door. Erik didn’t even have to say a word; Angel was already bounding after him, silent and deadly.

The man who was left threw up a hand. “Wait. You can’t—wait—”

Erik’s lips curled, baring his teeth. It was over in an instant, before the man could even take a step back. Blood spilled over Erik’s teeth, filled his jaws. He bit down until he heard the _crunch_ of crushed vertebrae and shook the man viciously, angrily. Only when the man went completely limp did he loosen his grip, blood coating his muzzle.

A soft sound to his left drew his attention. He looked and went still. There was a cage of silver, placed directly under a skylight spilling moonlight, and inside the cage was a bloodied gray wolf with eyes the color of a deep summer sky. Human eyes. Charles’s eyes.

Prey forgotten, Erik bounded over to the cage. _Charles!_

To his surprise, the wolf inside raised a lip to him and shrank away, hackles up. _Charles?_ Erik tried again, confused. He paced round the cage, trying to catch his eyes. _It’s me, Erik._

He was met only with a snarl. A moment later, Mortimer joined him and said, _What’s wrong with him?_

 _I don’t know_. Erik looked at Charles, at those hurt, blank eyes, and felt his heart clench in fear and anger. _Get him out of there. We’re taking him home._

 

*

 

When Charles woke, it was in his own room. He gripped the sheets underneath him in confusion, trying to recall what had happened. How had he come back here? How had he escaped that cage? Had his pack found him, rescued him? Or was this some sort of fever dream, a result of the serum he had been given?

He pushed himself up and nearly fell back into the pillows, his arms weak and his whole body aching. A quick self-examination revealed no obvious wounds, no bandages. He had a few scrapes on his forearms, but they were minor. The only sharp discomfort was in his knee, but that was an old pain. Other than that, he seemed, miraculously, fine.

He was alive and relatively uninjured and _home_. How?

Footsteps approached his door. A moment later, it opened, and Hank appeared, carrying a tray of glasses, one filled with water, the other with orange juice. When he saw Charles sitting up, he stopped, relief suffusing his expression. “Charles. Thank god.”

“Hank.” Charles scanned his face, searching for answers. “I’m…what happened?”

“What do you remember?”

“I remember those hunters. I remember being taken. They put me in a cage and they…they injected me with something. A serum.” Charles rubbed at the meat of his arm, but there was no injection site. There wasn’t even an ache left. “I…don’t know what happened after that.”

Hank set the tray down on the nightstand and sat down gingerly. Charles noticed for the first time that there was a chair pulled up by his bedside. It smelled, he thought dizzyingly, of Erik.

“The serum they injected you with suppressed your consciousness,” Hank explained. “It brought the wolf out, the wild wolf. You wouldn’t have been conscious after that. I managed to reverse-engineer an antidote. Once you came back to yourself, you automatically shifted back, but you were disoriented. You passed out. You’ve been sleeping for eighteen hours.”

Charles absorbed that slowly. “I’m…alright?”

“I think so. I’ve been monitoring your vitals, and it seems like your body has metabolized the last of the serum. We’ll still have to keep an eye on you to make sure there aren’t any lasting side effects of course.”

“Of course,” Charles murmured. He glanced at the chair again. Now that he had noticed Erik’s scent, it grew stronger. It seemed to fill his entire room, and it was fresh. “Has…has Erik been here?” he asked hesitantly.

Hank’s mouth thinned. With obvious reluctance, he said, “Erik was the one who brought you here. He and his pack found you and broke you out.”

Erik had come for him. Erik had found him and freed him and brought him here. Charles didn’t know what to do with that. He didn’t like the small curl of hope that appeared unbidden at the back of his mind. “Is he still here?”

“He and his pack haven’t left.” Hank’s lip curled in displeasure. “We put them in the east wing, as far away from everyone else as possible. Alex wanted to run them off as soon as they brought you here, but…well, Erik refused to leave.”

“I want to see him.”

“Professor—”

“Please, Hank.”

Hank glared at him for a long moment. Then his shoulders slumped, and he said quietly, “Fine. I’ll let him know you’re awake.”

Once he was gone, Charles sank wearily back into the pillows. He couldn’t remember ever feeling this tired, except perhaps the first time he ever completed a shift. But that had been happy, satisfied exhaustion; this felt bone-deep and deadly, like a sickness that refused to relent. He wanted to close his eyes, but he was suddenly scared that if he did that, he wouldn’t wake up again. Or, even worse, he’d wake up in that cage, trapped.

He smelled Erik before he saw him. Even now, the scent of him got Charles’s blood up, quickened his pulse. The door eased open, and Erik slipped in. Their eyes met and held.

After a long, aching moment, Charles said, “I hear I have you to thank for my rescue.”

“Well. Your pack deserves some credit. They reached out to us when you went missing.”

“They did?” Charles said with surprise.

“I guess they figured they loved you more than they hated me. They knew I could help.”

“And you did.”

Erik inclined his head.

“Thank you,” Charles said softly. It was difficult to be angry with Erik now, in a moment that felt so unexpectedly gentle. Their grievances felt distant and old. Charles suddenly wanted nothing more than to pull Erik in his arms, to press him close.

Erik had his hand on the doorknob—in fact, he hadn’t released it since he’d first come in. “I should go. I wanted to stay to make sure you were alright and…well, clearly you are.”

“No,” Charles blurted out.

Erik’s eyes widened fractionally. “No?”

Charles forced his tone to calm. “No. I’ve yet to…to thank you and your pack. You ought to stay. At least stay the night.”

“It _is_ night,” Erik said with some amusement.

Charles flushed. “Then stay until morning at least. You shouldn’t be running around in the dark.”

Erik’s eyes hardened, and his jaw clenched. “Because there are hunters out there who will do our kind harm.”

“No, that’s—” _Not true. We have an agreement with the hunters. This is safe ground._ Those words tasted like ashes in his mouth now. Were they really safe? How could they ever be sure?

“You see now,” Erik said. That wasn’t mockery in his eyes, it was weariness. “You see why it was foolish to ever think they would let you live in peace.”

“They were…they were acting without the permission of the Guild,” Charles said slowly. “They were rogue hunters. The original agreement I made still stands.” At least he thought it did. He would have to check, when he felt stronger.

Erik shot him a derisive look. “Why do you insist on ignoring the truth, Charles? Even after what happened, you still believe humans can be trusted?”

“I still believe there are good humans out there,” Charles said firmly. “I still believe we can coexist.”

“They tried to _kill_ you,” Erik hissed. “They’re trying to eradicate our kind. You would be stupid to think they could change their minds.”

Charles’s eyes flashed. “Then I’m stupid. I’m stupid for believing that they can be better than we think of them, just as we can be better than they think of us.”

Anger rolled off of Erik in waves. Charles could smell it on him, sharp and fearsome. “You are—the most _foolish_ —the most _stubborn_ idiot I’ve ever known.”

“So are you,” Charles said coolly, refusing to be cowed by Erik’s fury. He lifted his chin and stared Erik straight in the eye, ignoring the wolf inside him that had its hackles raised, that urged him to stand down or attack before this enemy wolf could make the first move.

He held Erik’s gaze until, to his surprise, Erik’s expression softened. Slowly, he shut the door behind him and came forward. But instead of stopping at the foot of the bed or going for the vacated chair, he climbed directly onto the bed without pause. Charles stared at him, wide-eyed with confusion, as Erik pulled him into his arms and clutched him close.

“You are a foolish, stubborn idiot,” Erik said again, his voice muffled against Charles’s hair, “but I wouldn’t love you any other way.”

Charles’s pulse thundered in his temple. “You…”

“Be quiet,” Erik said. “Let me have this. Just…” His fingers trembled as they closed around Charles’s hand. “Seeing you in that cage. Thinking they’d somehow broken you…” He shook his head like he was tossing the memory off and pulled Charles closer. “Let me have this.”

Charles sat very still, cradled against Erik’s chest. His head spun. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t make himself move. Then he couldn’t stop himself: he clenched one hand in Erik’s shirt and buried his face against Erik’s shoulder, breathing him in, soaking in his warmth and his presence. It had been so long. It had been years, and he couldn’t help the tears that pricked the corners of his eyes, or the lump that choked his throat.

“I missed you,” he whispered when he could speak again. “Oh god, Erik, I missed you so much.”

Erik said nothing, but the way his arms tightened desperately around him spoke volumes. After all this time…Erik still loved him. Charles had never felt so seen and _understood_.  

When he raised his head, Erik moved, too, and their mouths met. It was gentle and familiar, like touching noses after a long time away, remembering each other. The wolf in Charles shivered, knowing its true fit, its heart. There was nothing in the world as true as this, the way he knew Erik and was known by him in turn. He had missed it for so long he forgot how to crave it, but the longing came back in an instant, sharp and hungry. He gripped Erik’s arms and held him close.

“I thought—” Erik whispered as they caught their breaths. “There were times I thought you hated me.”

“There were times I did,” Charles admitted. “But never more than I loved you.”

That earned him a rare smile. Erik kissed him again, slow and familiar, and Charles closed his eyes, his chest tight and hot and lovely.  

 

*

 

In the morning, Charles woke first and held onto Erik like Erik would wake and bolt immediately. But when Erik blinked his eyes open, he only glanced drowsily at Charles’s face and hitched him closer. They remained like that for a long while, watching sunlight begin to paint the room golden. Only when the room was blindingly bright did Erik finally stir.

“I should go,” he said, pulling his leg out from between Charles’s.

“Stay,” Charles said.

Erik stilled and gave him a long, searching look. “Stay?”

“Stay with me.” Charles took his hand and laced their fingers together. “Stay here. I need you.”

“Charles…”

“Please.” He had never wanted something so much. He had never needed something like this with his whole soul, man and wolf in one.

Erik let out a soft sigh. “Your pack—”

“We will figure it out.”

“And _my_ pack?”  

“If they will be peaceful and abide by my rules, then they’re more than welcome to stay.”

“Your rules?”

“Our rules,” Charles amended. “You will, of course, have your say.” He smiled wryly. “I doubt I could stop you.”

“And you’re alright with that?”

“I don’t expect everyone here to agree with me unreservedly. Alex certainly doesn’t, and there are times when even Hank and I don’t see eye-to-eye.” Charles raised Erik’s hand to his mouth, kissed his knuckles. “I can handle one more dissenter among the ranks.”

Erik frowned. “That’s not what makes a good pack.”

“No.” Charles squeezed his hand. “But it can make a good family. So…” He searched Erik’s face, his eyes, looking for hope. “Stay?”

Silence. The wolf wanted to shrink away, hurt, but then Erik exhaled slowly and said, “Alright. For now.”

“For now,” Charles echoed in disbelief. Then relief washed over him, then joy. Overwhelmed, he buried his face into Erik’s shoulder and breathed him in, the powerful, heady scent of him.

That night they ran together. The moon was still full and strong above them, calling the wolves out. While the others in his pack raced on ahead, Charles loped along without hurry, limping slightly because of his knee. But the pain couldn’t reach him tonight, not when Erik ran alongside him, their strides syncing perfectly. He hadn’t loved the night so much in years.

For a long time, there was nothing but the damp earth beneath their paws, the wet of the dewy grass against their muzzles, and the steady thuds of their heartbeats, beating together. Then Erik threw back his head and howled, long and joyous, and without a thought, Charles joined him. Their voices joined and rose toward the moon, full and rich and warm.

It was a beautiful night.

 

 

 


End file.
